JAMES LARSON

The following article is a précis of an essay by James Larson in the September 2016 edition of Christian Order. The original article, and his important October follow up, can be read in full HERE and HERE.

And there shall come forth a rod out of the root [stump] of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root [stump]. [Is. 11:1]

Pre-eminent among such stumps in all of salvation history is that of Jesse, father of King David. The temporal line of Kings of Judah (the line of Jesse) ended with King Sedecias in 587 B.C., when Jerusalem was captured by Nabuchodonosor, the temple was burned, the Ark of the Covenant disappeared, and Judah was reduced to a province of the Babylonian Kingdom. But out of the root [stump] of Jesse, in the line of David, would rise the Incarnation and the spiritual Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

The parallels that can be drawn between the bankrupt state of the Judaism at the time of the birth of Our Lord and the current state of the Catholic Church, especially (but not exclusively) during the 3-year old Papacy of Francis, are striking. Virtually all things Catholic seem in the process of being destroyed. Pope Francis’ denigration of traditional Catholicism and Catholics; his out of control promotion of a false ecumenism; his denial of the Catholic Church’s commission to convert people of other religions, and even atheists, to Catholicism; his promotion of a false mercy at the expense of Catholic truth and the integrity of the sacraments; his promotion of an ecological pantheism in Laudato Si, in imitation of Teilhardian theology - all of these policies, and more, are deeply destructive of Catholic identity. Faced with this disintegration of the Church, the faithful remnant have been reduced to the "stump" of the Church.

"Communion" with Decadence and Heresy

Possibly no single event will more clearly unite all the elements of this Catholic disintegration than Pope Francis’ visit to Lund, Sweden on October 31, 2016 in order to kick start a year-long celebration honouring Martin Luther and the Protestant Revolution.

The Lutheran Church of Sweden is not only heretical it is also decadent. Women have been ordained as priestesses since 1960, the “Primate” is a woman, and in 2009 the performance of same-sex sham weddings was approved. A second woman "Bishop," Eva Brunne (Bishop of Stockholm), is “married” to a fellow priestess and is (or was) the world’s first openly lesbian "bishop" within a mainline Christian denomination. She and her partner have a son. Her Episcopal motto is “Don’t show favouritism.” In September of 2015, Bishop Brunne attained worldwide notoriety for proposing that the Seaman’s Church in Stockholm Harbour remove all Christian symbols, including crosses (so as not to offend incoming Moslems), and replace them with directions to Mecca. Seeking any sort of “communion” with such decadence and heresy is spiritual suicide.

Satanic Deceit: From Conflict to Communion

The Ecumenical Commemoration in Lund Cathedral will be based on the Catholic Lutheran Common Prayer. This Common Prayer, in turn, follows directly from the publication in 2013 of the document titled From Conflict to Communion (the fruit of 50 years of ecumenical dialogue). The Common Prayer praises Luther and “the many guiding theological and spiritual insights that we have all received through the Reformation”.

From Conflict to Communion is the most satanically deceitful document ever to issue forth from the Vatican.

The False Guiding Principle

We must first dispose of the false principle stated repeatedly in this document, and also listed as the first principle in the Common Prayer, that all future relations between Catholics and Lutherans “should always begin from the perspective of unity and not from the point of division…”. This might indeed be a valid guiding principle if, as the document dishonestly claims, “the things that unite us are greater than those that divide us”, but this is simply false. Let us consider the following three points about which, in its rush to embrace a false unity, the document From Conflict to Communion is deviously silent:

1) The Lutheran Church is not Apostolic and therefore in no way a “part” of the One Mystical Body of Christ.

2) The Lutheran Church does not have valid ordinations and therefore cannot confect the Eucharist, offer valid sacramental Confessions, Holy Orders, Confirmations, or the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. To gloss over all of this, to never mention it, and to place “what unites us” at the forefront, involves not only the most profound deception but also a horrendous sin against the fundamental principles of charity and mercy towards those souls who are suffering under these deceptions and deprivations.

3) It must be pointed out that the document From Conflict to Communion deals very specifically, and somewhat extensively, with the following doctrines: Justification; Eucharist (including the concepts of Real Presence and Sacrifice), Ministry; and Scripture and tradition (the document always uses the lower-case “t”). In obscuring and falsifying the radical divide between Catholic and Lutheran theology in regard to every one of these doctrines, the authors are faced with the “hard” and substantive definitions and anathemas of Trent. This is especially true of the Tridentine Canons concerning Justification and the Eucharist. From Conflict to Communion therefore finds it necessary, from the very beginning to establish the following principle as the foundation of its aberrant conclusions:

While the Council of Trent largely defined Catholic relations with Lutherans for several centuries, its legacy must now be viewed through the lens of the actions of the Second Vatican Council. This Council made it possible for the Catholic Church to enter the ecumenical movement and leave behind the charged polemic atmosphere of the post-Reformation era. [paragraph 90] [emphasis mine]

We are here faced with an emphatic denial of the binding, dogmatic, infallible teachings of a General Council of the Church!

The Lutheran Revolt: the genesis of Luther’s revolt is found in his neurosis with regard to his personal inability to cooperate with God’s grace. His entire theological system is therefore built on his man-made dogma of justification by “Faith Alone”. In his own translation of the Bible he went so far as to insert the word "alone" into Romans 3:28, so that it read: "For we account a man to be justified by faith alone, without the works of the law."

The word "alone" is simply not in the original. Nor can the words “without the works of the Law” be interpreted to mean “faith alone”. Under the New Law of the Gospel man was indeed freed from obeying all the ritualistic prescriptions of the Old Law. But this does not mean that he was freed from the Ten Commandments, the moral law of the New Testament, or the ability and obligation to exercise his free will in order to cooperate with God’s grace. Luther denied all this, and in fact labelled the Epistle of St. James as an “epistle of straw”, because St James declared that “faith without works is dead.”

If you read Luther's writings, you will find scores of sentiments along the following lines: "It is more important to guard against good works than against sin." and "If Moses should attempt to intimidate you with his stupid Ten Commandments, tell him right out — chase yourself to the Jews." And Luther's denial of free will is clearly expressed in his following passage: "So man’s will is like a beast standing between two riders. If God rides, it wills and goes where God wills: as the Psalm says, ‘I am become as a beast before thee, and I am ever with thee.’ (Ps. 73: 22-3). If Satan rides, it wills and goes where Satan wills. Nor may it choose to which rider it will run, or which it will seek; but the riders themselves fight to decide who shall have and hold it." (II, viii). The “fight” between God and Satan mentioned above is only a metaphor disguising the fact that Luther believed that God was the author of all evil as well as good. In denying free will, Luther, logically must make God the author of sin. Luther’s entire theory of Justification made man totally depraved, and in so doing, blasphemes God Who created man in His own Image.

The Corrective Canons of Trent

The Decree on Justification of the Council of Trent contains scores of Canons, all of which are specifically directed against Martin Luther and Lutheranism. Any attempt to reduce these Canons to historically conditioned polemics is indeed a work of Satan whose goal is to undermine all Catholic doctrine:

Trent infallibly teaches that the exercise of man’s free will is necessary for cooperating with the graces which lead to justification; necessary in cooperating with the grace of justification itself; necessary for persevering in Faith and good works, both of which are necessary for salvation; and necessary for performance of those good works which merit an increase of glory in eternal life.

We have been rightly very concerned about Pope Francis’s support of pastoral efforts which would undermine the Sacrament of Matrimony, and promote Eucharistic sacrilege. But what is happening in Lund, Sweden, can be seen as a much deeper assault upon the Catholic Faith. Even though no doctrine is to be promulgated, and the Infallible Magisterium will remain intact, the blessing and leadership which the Pope will be exercising over this event undermines the deepest roots of Our Faith. The ruinous effects that this will exercise upon the whole Church cannot be overestimated.

Triumphant Flower of the Naked "Stump"

No one can deny that the current nakedness of the Catholic Church - spiritual, moral, and even physical - is now widely exposed to both those who have loved and those who have hated her. In this time of “stripping” of the Church, a “band of brass and of iron” will have been placed around the “stump”, the faithful remnant, by God, and the flower that shall rise from this "stump" is the long promised Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.